


something to hold onto

by Areiton



Category: Captain America (Movies), Iron Man (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Age Difference, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Commander Steve Rogers, Fluff and Angst, M/M, Mutual Pining, POV Second Person, POV Steve Rogers, Silver Fox Steve Rogers, Steve doesn't go in the ice, This was supposed to be smutty and then it was just feels, Young Tony Stark, my bad - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-16
Updated: 2021-01-16
Packaged: 2021-03-13 18:07:52
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,370
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28782456
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Areiton/pseuds/Areiton
Summary: “Steve, darling,” Peggy says, and you turn, watch her come towards you with a young man, pale skin, a wicked smile, and familiar eyes. “You remember Tony, don’t you?”
Relationships: Steve Rogers/Tony Stark
Comments: 37
Kudos: 349





	something to hold onto

It goes like this: 

You put the Valkyrie in the water. And then you swim. 

You don't die. 

You get picked up in Greenland and Howard Stark is already on his way, a search and rescue only be believes will succeed. 

It goes like this: 

You tell Peggy you’re going back. 

You ask her to wait. 

You take the Howlies and you  _ look _ , do what you didn't have time for then, because you should have died and Bucky should have died and if you didn't--

You go searching for Bucky, following trails and rumors and a missing body until you find a broken shell of a man and rumors of a snake that should be dead. 

It goes like this: 

You don't die but a bomb is dropped and then another and maybe part of you does die. 

You don't die but Bucky is broken, and you don't know how to put the pieces together. 

You don't die, but Peggy looks at you with regret and sadness and you think--maybe you should have. 

It goes like this: 

You don't die. 

~*~ 

You go back to war. It’s familiar, what you know even if it isn’t what you want. It’s familiar and you’re good at it and Bucky falls into place at your side, familiar and comforting and as unchanging as you are. 

He’s haunted now, and you hate the ghosts in his eyes and his dark days, when he’s all silence and brooding, the long months he vanishes and comes back restless and violent. 

He’s never talked about the years he was with the Russians, or the way you found him, and you’ve never pressed. Some days, you think you should. 

~*~ 

You fight with Howard. About his fucking bomb and his company, about the presidents and Bucky. About his child bride wife and his drinking and Peggy. 

You're there when the boy is born, but Howard is drunk and you only stay long enough to brush a kiss on Maria's forehead and touch the tiny hand of his newborn son. Small fingers wrap around yours and you smile. “Hello, Anthony.” 

~*~ 

Your relationship, shaky at best, shatters when you find out about Zola. “He tortured Bucky!” you shout in his face, and Howard waves it off. 

“You need to learn to adjust,” Howard snarls. 

“And you need some fucking principals,” you snap back, furious. 

You slam out of the mansion, and you see Tony peeking at you from behind Jarvis, wide eyes and pale face, and you feel a pang of regret, that you’re losing this--Maria and Jarvis and Tony, sweet and young and already brilliant. 

But Howard is there with his secrets and his agenda and the way his gaze tracks over you, hungry and calculating. 

“You and Howard want different things, darling,” Peggy tells you. You’re friends now, able to look at her and see the woman you respect and admire, and not just the might have beens. “You’ll never like him, because you don’t respect him. And he’ll never forgive you for that.” 

“So what do I do with that?” 

She shrugs, and smiles, enigmatic. “You do what you can.” 

~*~ 

What you can is this: you move to DC, to her newly founded SHIELD, and you work. You aren’t an army, like Phillips wanted, but you are here and the people you loved are growing older but you--you don’t. You work. 

~*~ 

Bucky returns from six months of silence, and there’s blood under his nails and fury in his eyes, and a little girl, red haired and beautiful and unnerving, at his side. 

“She’s mine,” he says, and it’s not true and it is, and it doesn’t matter, because there’s a look in his eyes, feral and familiar, and you don’t think anyone would survive crossing him on this, maybe not even you. 

“Ok, Buck,” you say, mildly, and that’s how you become an Uncle. 

~*~ 

Some years are easy, and you train the SHIELD agents that get younger every year. 

Some years are hard, endless the way that you have begun to feel. 

Some years are quick and brutal, marked by blood and shield in your hand and the battles that never end. 

But some years--some years are Natasha’s smiles, shyly emerging, and ballet practice and bake sales, and weekends cleaning your weapons because Nat likes it with her cartoons. 

~*~ 

When they promote you to Commander, you see Howard. It’s the first time in--decades. You’re startled, to realize he’s gotten  _ old.  _

“That’s what people do, darling,” Peggy says, a little bit dry and you laugh and when your old friend comes up to you, shakes your hand and stares at you with that old familiar hunger, you don’t hate him for it--you feel only the slightest stirrings of pity. 

You think of the years that are passing, think of Natasha, your niece who smiles now, and Peggy’s children, her niece Sharon, and think, with a pang, of Tony. 

You haven’t seen him in ten years, since you stormed out of the mansion all those years ago. 

You shake Howard’s hand and you think maybe it’s time, to go back and mend those fences, because maybe you are slowly aging--but he is not and you don’t want the chance to pass, to fix things. 

~*~ 

Bucky laughs at you, when you tell him, but he never much liked Howard, and you can’t blame him too much for that, considering Howard never had any use or time for Bucky. 

You mean to call, but a mission comes up with SHIELD and you end up in Iowa, chasing a boy with a bow of all fucking things and you forget, for a time, that you mean to fix what’s broken. 

~*~ 

He dies. 

Howard dies, and you don’t really believe it, but there’s Peggy, sobbing on the phone, and the reality of the truth--Howard Stark is dead. 

You sit across from her, this girl you thought you’d love and marry and have a life with, this woman who has become a fulcrum in your life, the turning point that you built everything that came after upon, as much as Bucky is, as much as Natasha is.

There’s more white in her hair than black now, red lips wrinkled and thin, laugh lines near her lips. 

Your hair is going grey and your body aches sometimes, but there’s this--you can still fight, can still lead the young recruits in training and combat, still slip into undercover missions that Bucky has always been better at. 

You are as old as Peggy and Howard, and you feel it some days--but days like this, you mostly feel lonely. 

~*~ 

You have Bucky, steady and haunted and mirroring your own age. You have Natasha, beautiful and defiant and vibrantly alive. You have Peggy and her children who you watched grow up, watched fall in love and marry. 

But you feel, so often, utterly alone. 

~*~ 

“Steve, darling,” Peggy says, and you turn, watch her come towards you with a young man, pale skin, a wicked smile, and familiar eyes. “You remember Tony, don’t you?” 

~*~ 

“Dad used to talk about you,” Tony says, when Peggy has wandered away and it’s only you and this beautiful creature--this son of your dead friend. 

“Did he?” you say, dumbly, and his eyes are bright and laughing, laughing at you. 

You don’t think you mind, not if it means he’s laughing. 

“Always wanted to fix things with you, Cap.” 

“Commander,” you correct, instinctive. You haven’t been a captain in almost five years and you remember it, abruptly, wanting to fix things. You never did. 

Tony’s eyes have widened, just a touch and his voice is different, a little bit raspy, when he repeats, “Commander.” 

~*~ 

You jerk off, that night, to the thoughts of a wicked smile and big brown eyes. 

~*~

He is a child--he is  _ twenty-- _ and your friend’s son. 

He isn’t for you, a bright shining beacon in a world you have long since decided has gone dark. 

He is brilliant and beautiful and for the first time in so long you have forgotten what it feels like, you  _ want.  _

~*~ 

You take missions that take you out of the country, come home for a few days and Bucky looks at you, eyes sharp and knowing and you don’t meet his gaze, avoid Peggy when you are forced back to the states. 

“You miss Nat’s show, she’ll gut you,” Bucky tells you, when you’re in Belarus, and not even sure why--the Cold War has been a series of confusing standoffs. “Come home, Stevie.” 

“Buck--” 

“You can’t run forever,” he says, and he sounds  _ exhausted _ , the way you’ve felt for years, and you think maybe it’s because he ran first. “Come home.” 

~*~ 

You go to Nat’s recital, and sit between Tony and Bucky in a dark row, and the warm slight weight of him is distracting, even as she is beautifully captivating on the stage. 

You don’t ask why he’s there, not when Bucky stares at you, that thousand yard stare that promises violence, not when Nat hugs him, giddy and unreserved, not when Peggy lets herself lean against him, frail and thin and still fierce. 

He fits here, in your family, the people you love, and you love it, far more than you should. 

~*~ 

“We should get coffee,” he says and you smile and shake your head. 

~*~ 

“Come over for dinner,” he says and you give your regrets and stay home. 

~*~ 

“I got tickets to the Dodgers,” he says and you laugh and take a mission to Atlantic City. 

~*~ 

“Why do you hate me?” he asks, and you stare at him, big eyes and wet mouth and messy hair you want to sink your fingers into. 

“I don’t hate you,” you say. “That’s the problem.” 

Understanding fills his eyes and Tony  _ smiles. _

~*~ 

You want him. 

You’ve wanted him since the moment Peggy led him, young and beautiful and smiling, up to you. 

Now--seeing him with your niece, the way he’s sweet and careful with her, the way he brings weapons and dancing shoes to her and let’s her paint his nails and listens intently when Nat bitches about school--it makes you weak. 

The way he is with Peggy, gentle and teasing, flashes of the boy he had been in the way he reverts to a teasing mischievous child with his godmother. 

The way he treats Bucky, like a peer, talking too rapid and fast about tech, about SI and SHIELD and Nat--

You want him. You want the complex man who talks about his assistant like she’s his favorite thing on earth, who laughs with your niece and watches you like you’re a puzzle he can’t wait to solve. 

You want him and sometimes, when he’s standing too close, lips stained with wine and laughing, you forget he’s twenty three and not for you. 

~*~ 

The first time Tony kisses you is on your birthday. He throws a party for you at his beach house, and kisses you in the dark kitchen, under a spray of fireworks while his godmother and your family laugh and shout outside. 

He tastes like cheap beer and strawberries, like sunshine and freedom and everything you can’t have. 

~*~ 

You leave the next day, take a training assignment with Barton in the wilds of Canada and bitch the whole fucking time, because who decided that Clint fucking Barton should train baby SHIELD agents. 

You spend six months in the wild, come home with a thick beard and too long grey hair and an ache to see your bed. 

You sleep for three days solid and Bucky drags you and Barton both to a family dinner at Peggy’s son’s house. 

Tony is there, and he looks--different. Stretched and tired, shadows in his gaze. You listen as the family teases him, as Nat sniffs over his latest girlfriend, and Tony avoids your gaze and skirts the conversation with a deft skill that’s infuriating and fascinating. 

“He’s been spiralling,” Bucky says, later, when you’re sitting in the dark living room with him, “Whatever happened, before you left, he didn’t take you running real well.” 

He sighs, and rubs a hand through his hair, hooks it--it’s long now, when did he grow out his hair?--behind his ear and says, “You gotta quit this shit, Steve.” 

“I can’t stay here, with him.” 

“You could. He wants you to.” 

“Buck,” you say, reproachful and he shrugs. 

“You ever think you aren’t meant to be alone?” he thinks. “You fight these wars and you go on these missions and you’ve got nothing to keep you going, nothing to come home to.” 

“I have you, Nat. Pegs.” 

Bucky smiles at him and it’s sad, resigned. “I love you, brother. But you need a reason to live, because folks like us--watching our friends die? It’s gonna be too easy to give up.” 

~*~ 

You think about it a lot, Bucky’s words. He found his reason to live, even after the years of rage and grief, found it in a pretty little girl with haunted eyes and red hair, and he never looked back or away. 

You think of the decades of fighting, with the Howlies and for Peggy, with Nick Fury and Coulsen and Barton, and wonder if it wasn’t always you, reaching for something you can’t find. 

Tony smiles at you, over coffee at Peggy’s, and you don’t want to run, don’t want to fight. 

You want, for the first time, to rest. 

~*~ 

You kiss him for the first time in the spring, while Natasha is sleeping in the sun outside the house where you and Bucky raised her and Barton can’t quite stop watching her, and Tony is sun-gold and laughing, with his tired eyes and sad smiles. 

“Don’t,” he whispers, almost begging, “If you’re going to leave again, don’t do this.” 

You almost, almost step away, and his lips tremble under yours, eyes bright and scared and hopeful. 

He’s too young and your friend’s child and not for you. 

But he makes you feel  _ alive _ , too, clings to you like you might vanish, watches you like you  _ matter.  _

You drag him close, lick the whimper from his mouth and hold on tight. 

  
  
  



End file.
